New Dam Threatens Egypt’s Control of Nile

Date: 09 February 2020 - 22:07

News ID: ۷۵۹۷۰

MINYA (Dispatches) – The Egyptian farmer stood in his dust-blown field, lamenting his fortune. A few years ago, wheat and tomato-filled greenhouses carpeted the land. Now the desert was creeping in.
"Look,” he said, gesturing at the sandy soil and abandoned greenhouses. "Barren.”
The farmer, Hamed Jarallah, attributed his woes to dwindling irrigation from the overtaxed Nile, the fabled river at the heart of Egypt’s very identity. Already, the Nile is under assault from pollution, climate change and Egypt’s growing population, which officially hits 100 million people this month.
And now, Jarallah added, a fresh calamity loomed.
A colossal hydroelectric dam being built on the Nile 3,200km upriver, in the lowlands of Ethiopia, threatens to further constrict Egypt’s water supply - and is scheduled to start filling this summer.
"We’re worried,” he said. "Egypt wouldn’t exist without the Nile. Our livelihood is being destroyed, God help us.”
The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the $4.5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - Africa’s largest, with a reservoir about the size of London - has become a national preoccupation in both countries, stoking patriotism, deep-seated fears and even murmurs of war.
To Ethiopians, the dam is a cherished symbol of their ambitions - a megaproject with the potential to light up millions of homes, earn billions from electricity sales to neighboring countries and confirm Ethiopia’s place as a rising African power.
After years of bumpy progress, including corruption scandals and the mysterious death of its chief engineer, the first two turbines are being installed. Officials said the dam will start filling in July.
That prospect induces dread in Egypt, where the dam is seen as the most fundamental of threats.
Egypt is one of the driest countries on earth, with 95 per cent of its people living along the Nile or its teeming Delta. The river, which flows south to north, provides nearly all of their drinking water.
Never before has Egypt had to contend with a country upstream enjoying a chokehold over the Nile - a country, moreover, that an Egyptian ruler once tried to invade.
Egyptian experts have issued dire predictions of parched fields, empty taps and threats to farmers in the sprawling Nile Delta, which produces two-thirds of Egypt’s food supply. The growing risks of frequent, intense droughts on a hotter planet add to the tension.